Attention
From Encyclopædia
Attention is the focus of
consciousness. Objectively, it
entails selecting from all available sensory or memorized information certain parts for further processing. The efficacy of attention is measured by the advantage that attended tasks have over unattended tasks and also by the ability to resist distraction. Different kinds of attention of differing degrees of efficiency are involved in listening to one speaker out of many at a cocktail party, concentrating on the
colors of a
painting while ignoring its forms, searching for an acquaintance in a crowd, and keeping one's mind on a problem rather than daydreaming. The fact that one must select implies that there are limits to the ability to perceive, think, or do several things at once.Attention is sometimes involuntary; it can be drawn by external stimuli that are intense, novel, or significant. These typically elicit an ORIENTING RESPONSE. The arousal increases, and the organism switches attention both internally and physically by orienting toward the stimulus. If, however, the stimulus is repeated or continuous, the response will eventually diminish or disappear altogether. Attention is not necessary for certain kinds of activity. The general physical features of a scene (its
color, size, shape, or movement) can be registered without attention being brought to bear. Also, tasks that initially required full attention may become so automatic that they can later be combined with other activities.Psychologists seek to discover which parts of the perceptual process are influenced by attention. One series of studies of selective listening required subjects to repeat ("shadow") one of two simultaneous messages while they were still listening to them; then their knowledge of the other message was probed. The results suggested that a person can register the general physical characteristics of two messages at once but can identify the verbal content of only one. This research culminated in Donald Broadbent's filter theory. He proposed that while a large amount of sensory information can be absorbed at one time, a selective filter (the attention mechanism) reduces the input from one source while that from another source is being analyzed by the brain. Subsequent experiments, however, showed that the content of an unattended message may be perceived if it is relevant, indicating that some analysis takes place before attention is brought to bear and that motivation, or
interest, is important in the activation of attention. Some theorists therefore claim that full perceptual analysis occurs before attention, which
Controls only access to
memory, to behavioral response, and to
consciousness. Other
evidence suggests, however, that attention can affect the earlier components of the BRAIN's response to stimuli.The difficulty of dividing attention between two tasks increases when the tasks involve the same mechanisms. One can combine listening to
speech with sight-reading
piano music much more easily than one can listen to two simultaneous
speech messages, perhaps because of the anatomical separation of the brain centers controlling the two tasks. Interference also occurs with unrelated tasks when these are difficult, which suggests that there is competition for limited resources of effort or arousal as well as for specific brain centers.Anne TreismanBibliography: Bion, W. R., Attention and Interpretation (1983); Broadbent, D. E.,
perception and
communication (1958); Neisser, Ulric, Cognition and Reality (1976) and
cognitive psychology (1967); Norman, D. A.,
memory and Attention, 2d ed. (1976); Posner, M.I., and Marin, O. S., eds., Attention and Performance (1985); Treisman, Anne, "Human Attention," in New
horizons in
psychology, ed. by B. M. Foss (1966).
